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In order to increase page load speed and save bandwidth when you visit Wikia, your web browser is instructed to save the current view of the page. This is called your "cache". Normally, revisiting the cached page, or clicking "Refresh" or "Reload", will cause the browser to ask the website if there is a newer version available. Sometimes though, you will view the older, cached version of the page even when a newer one is available. This can be frustrating if a change has recently been made to the page.

In order to ensure you're getting the latest version of the page you can bypass your cache. Bypassing your cache helps you to get the most recent version of a page, which will often clear errors you may see. This process is also sometimes called a hard refresh.

When to Bypass your cache

You will need to bypass your cache if you have made changes to:

A CSS page (personal or wikia-level).

A JS page.

The wikia favicon.

You may need to update your cache in other cases, such as updates to images, or to clear a "broken" page view. Generally, if you see anything "funny" or not changing it is worth trying to clear your browser cache to see if it resolves the issue.

How to Bypass your Cache

For most browsers bypassing the cache is simple. Below are some browser-specific ways to bypass your cache.

Internet Explorer

Hold the Control key, and press F5.

Hold the Control key, and click the Refresh button on the Start bar.

Mozilla family

This includes Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator and SeaMonkey. If using these products on a Mac, use the Cmd key instead of Ctrl.

Hold both Shift and Ctrl and press R.

Hold down the Control key, and press F5.

Hold down the Shift key, and click the Reload button on the navigation toolbar.

Safari

For version 4 and newer:

Hold down the Shift key and click the Reload toolbar button.

For version 3 and older:

Hold down the Cmd key, and press R. This kind of regular reload will usually bypass the cache.

(Tip: If you're using a Mac and you're using Safari, go to Safari > Empty Cache, press Empty and refresh your page.)

Google Chrome

On Windows: Hold the Ctrl and Shift keys and press the R key.

On OS X: Hold the Cmd and Shift keys and press the R key.

Opera

Before version 11.62, Opera did not have an option to forcibly bypass the cache, so if a normal refresh does not seem to work, you may want to try one of the following:

Empty the browser cache completely

Click edit this page, and save the page without making any modifications (this doesn't affect the page history).

In versions of Opera from 11.62:

Hold Ctrl or Shift and press F5.

Other Browsers

Please see the browser's website or help pages for further instructions.

Forcing the server to re-render

Bypassing your own cache might not be enough if the updated content is not being properly displayed or is contained in a template or other transcluded page. You may need to purge the server cache of old versions of the page in order for the new material to be visible.